Month: March 2008

FlickrFan

After listening to an interview with Dave Winer on a TWiT (this week in tech #134) podcast, I became interested in a “service” Winer was hacking together called FlickrFan. You may not recognize the name, but Winer was involved in the development of RSS. Anyway, Winer was describing FlickrFan and it was my impression he was describing a method for acquiring high quality images from “services” for display on HDTVs using a device such as Apple TV. The description of the quality of the images caught my attention.

I don’t own an AppleTV or have a HDTV, but it turns out you can use this service on a Mac and if you want use the images it downloads as your screen server. I have found the ever changing display of great images quite captivating. Default image feeds include AP wire photos and Agence France-Presse wire photos. You can add whatever additional feeds you want.

I took this picture of my office workspace to give you a feel for what appears on the screen(s).

Flickrfan in my office

A one or two sentence description of each image is also provided.

flickrfan.jpg

I am a news channel (mostly CNN) junkie. This feed of images adds a new dimension to this hobby. You can use this software in other ways, but just using it as a way to access news images has been worth the effort.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

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Could not make this stuff up

My students tell me I say some pretty funny things. The problem, they say, is they cannot tell when being funny is my intent.

I will save you the trouble of thinking too hard. I will now try to be funny. The comments that follow are absolutely factually accurate. I swear. It is my interpretation that is supposed to be funny.

Anyway, there I was at the end of a long week, at the club, working out. I was listening to Al Gore – Assault on Reason – on the ipod. After I was able to ramp the stairmaster up to a burn rate of a couple of calories a minute, I began to pay attention to my surroundings. Within my field of vision are three television sets each with a different show and all running closed captioning. On my left (told you this would be hard to make up) was CNN. On the right was Fox. I will get to the middle display at the end.

The individuals appearing on both televisions are the same. I know from experience that the spin must be going in opposite directions. What I can figure out from the closed captioning is that the word of the day is – Repudiate. There is a black minister and an older white woman and evidently both are racists. Some weird club they must belong to. The repudiate thing has something to do with these racists.

Then there was the image of Colin Powell. Not sure what he was there for and I don’t think anyone was trying to repudiate him.

You know, humor is a funny thing. Sometimes we try to be funny when life makes us nervous.

I hope the candidates get past this repudiate thing. I want to know if anyone besides me is worried about the stock market. I do repudiate falling stock prices and rising gas costs. Sorry.

Anyway – the television in the middle was playing a Bob Newhart rerun. Just what I needed – a pretend psychologist to help me deal with the schizophrenic situation I was in.

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Skype Chat with Cindy and Friends

I mentioned a few days ago that Cindy has been in Russia as part of a teacher to teacher exchange program. We had hoped to be able to communicate via Skype and when we finally connected today she had several of the teachers she working with her. I recorded the session to share some of the comments.

The discussion is probably little different than the banter you might hear in any teacher’s lounge, but there are still some subtle differences. The commitment to learning English is something we have encountered in several countries we have visited. I did get a chance to ask the students running the camera about filtering at their school.

Give the movie a few seconds to begin downloading before you press play.

[QUICKTIME http://studytools.psych.und.nodak.edu/wordpress/Russiacindy1.mov 320 257 false true]

For those interested in the software involved in this interaction, we were connecting using recent versions of Skype. The recording was done with Call Recorder For Skype ($15). I am using a wireless connection and speaking into the screen of my MacBook.

Cindy is now obviously in a location where she has higher bandwidth and she has added pictures to her blog. Her recent entries describe the content and methods of classes she has observed.

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Expert Search – New Idea

I wrote about the return of expertise a couple of days ago and today I encounter a new search engine roughly based on “human” expertise. Topicle is a new search site that allows participants to create their own search engines. You can search using existing search topics or create your own. There was not topic on “education blogs“, so I created my own. I simply copied a few URLs from my bloglines account to get it started. I admit this was not very original, but it would seem a search tool should cover some of the basics before moving on to specialized topics.

Topicle is supposed to function as a social search service. Participants identify topics, add URLs, and rate existing URLs. We will have to see if my little seed grows.

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A Swing Back Toward Expertise

Newsweek (Revenge of the Experts) offers a recent article contending that entrepreneurs are funding web ventures that offer a role for expertise. The logic appears to be that ad revenue drives web development and ads associated with an expert perspective are likely to be worth more because such sites will attract more attention. For example, Mahalo organizes resources that have been evaluated before inclusion. Mahalo reminds me of the original Directory sites that first offered a way to locate web resources.

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Elephant and the Dragon – Flat World Revisited

I just returned from a long drive to see my mom. I like driving by myself because I can listen to whatever I want. Over 800 miles worth of time to think. I like podcasts and audiobooks. This trip I spent most of my time listening to a recent book by Robyn Meredith – The elephant and the dragon. The book describes and compares the recent paths of India and China to become engines of economic change and the ripple of this development as it impacts us all. As Meredith describes it, these changes have brought us low Walmart prices and the outsourcing of many of the jobs that may have once produced more expensive versions of these same goods.

I have written on this topic many times. Mostly, I have focused on the writing of Thomas Friedman (The World is Flat). In my opinion, content of this type should be required reading for teachers, soon to be teachers, and anyone interested in U.S. education. There are many messages in this material, but here are a few:

  • Many resources (material goods and certain services) can now efficiently be produced by individuals in other countries at far less cost than is true of the U.S. and other countries who come to depend on the jobs this work requires.
  • This movement of job is inevitable because movement is easy to accomplish (e.g., Internet) and all buyers benefit from the lower cost of goods and services. Try explaining to folks that they should not shop at Walmart (and similar stores).
  • High income jobs will increasingly be based on higher level skills. Such skills require improved educational experiences.
  • Our educational advantage is also slipping. Other countries are investing heavily to develop educational institutions that can create people with these higher level thinking skills.

While the topic is still fresh in my mind, I will again urge educators to read one of these books (I can now offer two recommendations).

A recent Friedman speech at MIT may encourage you to put one of these books on your reading (or listening) list.

I would be remiss if I did not mention Vicki Davis and others’ Flat Classroom Project. This project encourages students from many countries (7 in 2007) to collaborate. Friedman mentions this project in the latest addendum to his book.

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Candidate Positions on NCLB

About a month ago, eSchool News offered a story summarizing the positions of candidates Clinton, McCain and Obama on NCLB.

While all candidates recommend reforms, the eSchool article appears to indicate the Democrats suggest more extensive modifications. Clinton focuses suggestions on adequate funding and an accountability system related to growth. Obama proposes federal help to develop new assessment techniques.

McCain notes the specific issues in evaluating student with disabilities and those with limited English proficiency.

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